FROM WISDOM TO HATE

I stated in my reviews of their first two albums that Gorguts is a generic throw-away death metal band. Then this album comes and proves me wrong and I have to eat my words.

This is the follow up to the highly acclaimed and very weird Obscura album. An album who went in all directions. From Wisdom To Hate is more a linear album with a coherent theme. It is still not a generic death metal album though. At times, it sounds like an industrial album. Nile is also a good reference. This neo type of death metal based on hard-core is also a reference. The rhythms on this album is weird and pretty innovative. The death growls is still there. The music is still brutal as heck. But all the brutality is anchored in some very intelligent designs this time. Gorguts is to death metal what Arcturus is to black metal. What else can I compare this to ? Well, their previous album Obscura. If you like Gorguts first two albums, you will hate this album. This is death metal taken kicked into touch with the 21th century. I struggle to love and even understand Obscura. Maybe that album is a bridge too far for me. But I really like From Wisdom To Hate.

Intelligent death metal; that's Gorguts. And yes, I have both eaten my words and apologised.

3 stars

GORGUTS decided to let the creation of their new musical language on the unique and bizarre "Obscura" to speak for itself and only take some of the ideas they came up with on that release and fuse them with some of the more accessible sounds they developed on their first two releases. FROM WISDOM TO HATE is their 4th album and does just that. It basically takes the accessible traits of their early albums such as more recognizable rhythms and brutal harmonies and marry them with some of the dissonance and strangeness of "Obscura." The result is a middle-of-the-road sounding album that works quite well. In addition to these two styles merging, Luc Lemay and his band add some touches of atmosphere to the compositions giving them a slicker feel but never compromising the brutal monstrous feel of the metal itself.

The 4th track "The Quest For Equilibrium" stands out because the intro has a particular orchestrated movie soundtrack feel before bursting into the furious tech death metal. This is new for the band and wouldn't be fully realized until the track "The Battle Of Chambo" on their 2013 "Colored Sands" release. This would also be the one and only album for drummer Steve MacDonald who would succumb to depression and take his own life causing the band to call it quits.

I find this to be a very high quality release from GORGUTS which manages to successfully fuse the past with new ideas and make an album that is not only less alienating than "Obscura" but respectfully let that album stand on its own instead of releasing another album just like it. Since Lemay and bassist Steve Cloutier are the only musicians to play on both albums it was probably easier to create a new sound. After disbanding Lemay would team up with Steeve Hurdle (guitarist on "Obscura") to join the band Negativa after which they would release its one EP in 2006.